Real Presence Polycom Download

[Adriana Gowen]

Irecently got my hands on a Polycom RealPresence Trio 8800 Collaboration Solution including the Trio conference speakerphone, the Visual+ Smart Hub and the Logitech C930e. This happened to coincide with the release of an updated firmware release with the new Skype for Business UI. I thought I would share my experience with you.

A small room can be used for anything from a quiet space for one person to work to a place to have an audiovisual meeting with someone in another location. The equipment used for a small room can vary from nothing, where the user will bring personal audiovisual equipment, to a desk phone with or without video. Generally speaking, the user would bring a laptop for the collaboration experience.

This Microsoft slide defines 6 meeting space types. On the Go and My Stage are small meeting spaces. Auditorium is, of course, the large meeting space. The other three are medium sized spaces. The most common of which is the Conference Room.

If there is a screen, the first hurdle is that there are four common connection types to choose from. This mess of cables poking up through a hole in the table then defines where the presenter can sit. It is then up to the presenter to have one of the available ports on their laptop or (more often) tablet. If the presenter has a hybrid device like a Surface, they must also have one or more adapters to take in HDMI, VGA or DVI and convert to the the on-board mini display port.

The next step up is a conference phone which is optimized for Skype for Business. These are the devices which run Lync Phone Edition. You remember Lync Phone Edition. This was the program where Microsoft wrote a Lync client designed to run on phone hardware. They gave the spec to three vendors, Polycom, Aastra (now Mitel) and HP and said, build this phone and you can run this software. Polycom had a few devices which ran Lync Phone Edition (LPE). The desk phones are the CX500 and CX600, the conference phone is the CX3000. These devices could log in as a user or a resource account as a common area phone or meeting room. The advantages were directory integration, presence and ease of use.

The Polycom RealPresence Trio is, in essence, a new Skype for Business compatible conference room phone. Unlike the CX3000 which runs LPE, the Trio runs the Polycom UCS operating system, similar to the CX5500 and the VVX range of desk phones. The device can register directly to Skype for Business with a meeting room account. Since the meeting room account is also mail enabled, it is possible to invite the Trio as a Room resource. For ad-hoc meetings, the Trio can simply be dragged into an existing call or a new meeting can be started directly from the unit itself.

Now switch to a Skype for Business Front End server and open up the Skype for Business Server Management Shell as Administrator. Run the following to enable the account/mailbox as a meeting room in Skype for Business.

You can get the IP address of the device by tapping on the menu button in the top left of the screen. This will expand down and show the device IP address. Browse to the IP address in the browser. I had to use https and create an exception about the un-trusted certificate.

Once you are presented with a login page, tick the admin radio button and enter the admin pin which is 456 by default. Go to simple setup and expand base profile and change it from Generic to Lync and press save. The phone will reboot which takes a good few minutes.

Once the device reboots you can use the account you created to sign into the device. I used the touch screen to enter the account details and password. Simply click sign in and enter the details. I used mine against a Skype for Business Server installation where I am remote to the setup.

Once the device signs in it should look like this.

Now click Check for Updates. Use the drop down list next to available software versions and choose 5.4.4.7511. This is the new Skype for Business UI. Now click install. Seemingly nothing happens. The only indication that anything was happening is that I got a spinning gear in the top right corner of the device. The update took around 20 minutes and without warning, the device rebooted.

Once the phone boots, the screen changes to the new UI.

You get the familiar, blue circles and the icons are similar to the icons in the SfB client. The capacitive touch screen is a joy to use. A swipe takes you to the next screen with the call history, Bluetooth and settings buttons.

The first thing you will want to do is to enable the web UI since this is off by default.

If you also have the Visual+ accessory and Logitech C930e, these devices need to be paired with the Trio. For my set up, I plugged the network cable from my PoE switch into the Trio, and a second network cable from the Trio into the Visual+. The Logitech C930e device simply plugs into one of the USB ports on the back of the Visual+.

To pair the Visual+, go to settings -> Advanced -> enter the admin pin and tap done -> tap networked devices -> you should see an available device, in my case FCA5DD, tap on it to begin the pairing process. Again, no real indication that anything was happening other than the spinning gear. Once the pairing process was complete, the presence indicator went from flashing red to green.

The Trio is signed in to Skype for Business which means that it should have access to the internal directory. To search for a contact, just tap contacts and enter something in the search box with the on screen keyboard. It should now search the corporate directory by default. The previous firmware gave you a choice of local or corporate. When you find a contact, tap add to contacts to add the contact to the local contacts. To add an external contact, tap the menu key in the bottom right (looks like three horizontal lines) and tap add, enter the full SIP address and then tap submit to add the contact to the directory.

To place a call, select a contact and tap dial on the bottom left. To add someone to the call, tap add, select the contact and tap dial. This creates a conference call. You can also start a meeting with a single click by tapping Meet Now. Then you add your participants one at a time. Scheduled meetings show up in the Calendar and display a toast with a join button when the reminder notification is set to display. All really intuitive.

The Visual+ is a Smart Hub which connects the Trio phone and the Logitech C930e and makes it a full meeting room system. Plug the Visual+ into a screen or projector using an HDMI cable and you get a default hub screen with a nice, changable backdrop and the self view of the webcam.

You can also share content using one of a couple of Polycom apps which you install on your laptop or smartphone. This is either RealPresence Desktop or Mobile or the People+Content IP desktop application.

It would be really nice if you could attach a file to the meeting invite and then present the content from the phone display. But I guess that will be the domain of the Rigel stuff. Even presenting from a local USB key would be an improvement.

It is also Bluetooth enabled with NFC, so it can be paired with your smartphone and used as a speakerphone or for music playback. If you have and are licensed for RealPresence Mobile, you can use the Bluetooth pairing to share content. You can share content from local documents, photos, a website, or Dropbox. You can also choose to share annotations you make on the Whiteboard or Blackboard application within RealPresence Mobile.

If you install the application, you can connect to the Trio remotely by entering in the IP address. This, of course, means that your guest needs to be able to see the IP of the Trio. So it is better for guests to use the executable app using the supplied USB cable. However, if your laptop is on the same network, you can use the app remotely to present your screen to the Smart Hub.

At present, the Logitech C930e is the only supported webcam. It would be nice if the device supported customer supplied webcams, even if Polycom had a known good list. That said, the C930e is a really good HD webcam.

The Trio 8800 is a really great conference/meeting room phone. It sounds great and most of all it is easy for anyone to use. The price is around 1,000 for the Trio phone only which makes it about 440 more than the CX3000. The fact that it is more than just a meeting room phone makes it pretty good value. You can also buy the Visual+ and Logitech camera separately, but it is better value to buy it as a bundle at around 1,500.

The Visual+ and the Logitech C930e camera are nice add-ons which take the device from meeting room phone to meeting room system. The gallery video view on the Smart Hub display is nice and the fact that you can also present your screen into the meeting either using the Skype for Business client or one of the apps makes it a really compelling budget meeting room solution for new rooms or those that are updating old equipment.

All in all, I would recommend the Trio. The conference phone is excellent, the Visual+ is a nice add-on. The fact that it only works with the Logitech C930e is a little annoying, but not a deal breaker. Polycom is missing a few tricks here and there, but not enough that should dissuade you.

Site Disclaimer.

In full disclosure, I work for Logitech as a Solutions Engineer. Any reviews I do on products and services from Logitech and other vendors or providers are done in my own time and for my personal brand, which is UCStatus. Views and opinions expressed on this site are my own and not necessarily that of my employer.

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